JPMorgan grew its farm-loan portfolio by 76 percent, to $1.1 billion, between 2008 and 2015, according to year-end figures, as other Wall Street players piled into the sector. Total U.S. farm debt is on track to rise to $427 billion this year, up from an inflation-adjusted $317 billion a decade earlier and approaching levels seen in the 1980s farm crisis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But now - after years of falling farm income and an intensifying U.S.-China trade war - JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks are heading for the exits, according to a Reuters analysis of the farm-loan holdings they reported to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The agricultural loan portfolios of the nation’s top 30 banks fell by $3.9 billion, to $18.3 billion, between their peak in December 2015 and March 2019, the analysis showed. That’s a 17.5% decline. [...]

Chapter 12 federal court filings, a type of bankruptcy protection largely for small farmers, increased from 361 filings in 2014 to 498 in 2018, according to federal court records.

“My phone is ringing constantly. It’s all farmers,” said Minneapolis-St. Paul area bankruptcy attorney Barbara May. “Their banks are calling in the loans and cutting them off.”

• No surprise there. Farming is an inherently risky business, especially so in The Age Of Trump, and big banks are risk-averse. Better to let farmers go bankrups and for food be grown somewhere else than for investors—for which, read “speculators”—lose a single dime of their precious money.

Also, for the usual no reason whatsoever:

Have a good weekend, all.

–alopecia

Badgerite

One of Miles Davis’s best. Excellent taste! Upvote for that alone.

jimtowndem

are they all wearing red hats and will they still be wearing them when they go the polls.
there is a saying that fits this group of people. “you reap what you sow” and they definitely sowed us with that red hat wearing buffoon.